


Juanca

by Liminal_Space_LLC



Series: The World Only Spins Forward universe [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Derek "Nursey" Nurse is Unchill, Enemies to Friends, High School, M/M, Muslim!Nursey, Original Character(s), Popularity, Sibling Love, and unpopularity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 02:53:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16547450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liminal_Space_LLC/pseuds/Liminal_Space_LLC
Summary: Nursey has trouble making friends at Andover, but his sister is here to help remind him not to be an idiot.





	Juanca

**Author's Note:**

> 9 days to go until The World Only Spins Forward is published!
> 
> I'm counting down the last ten days before I post my fic for the OMGCP Big Bang by releasing content from the world of the story every day. They will all be collected in this [tumblr post](https://liminal-space-llc.tumblr.com/post/179805915293/countdown-to-twosf), so if you enjoy this, go check it out :)

Derek dawdles packing up his stall and watches the team leave the locker room in twos and threes, until he’s alone with the Andover “A” staring at him aggressively from the floor. He zips up his equipment bag and pulls out his phone. He vacillates for a moment between embarrassment and his sheer need to have an actual conversation that’s not between him and his poster of Brandon Dubinsky.

Finally, he gives in and texts his sister, _u free to hang out?_

A minute later he gets Aisha’s answer, _Sure! My room?_

He tells her he’ll be there in ten minutes and starts jogging over to his cluster, though he slows to a walk pretty soon. He can’t tell if people are staring at him or not, but he keeps catching people’s eyes, so he slows and tries to seem unobtrusive. Everyone here looks at him like they’re scrutinizing him from his hair to his shoelaces. Even though he crosses Aisha’s quad under the shadows of the bright red maple trees, he still feels like there are people watching him.

He gets to her dorm and shows his ID to the front desk guard then jogs up the dark wooden stairs, to find a knot of upperclassmen standing on the landing. He recognizes one of them, his dorm prefect, Ben Carlson. He sidles past the group, giving a quick wave to Ben when he catches his eye, but Ben waves his fingers with the kind of generic friendliness that makes clear that he has no idea who Derek is.

After that, he’s especially relieved to get to Aisha’s door. It’s covered in sticky notes from her hall mates wishing her good luck on her test. He knocks and whisper-yells, “ISHEEEEEEE! _Assalamu Alaikum!_ ”

The door opens to reveal his sister, grinning. She wraps him in her arms and declares, as though he wasn’t here three days ago, “ _Walaikum Assalam_ , dearest little brother! How long it’s been! How I have missed the sweet sight of your visage! The timbre of your voice! The rumble of your footsteps in these halls!”

Over her shoulder, he sees her roommate, Yasmine, watching this display with an expression of great amusement. “Hey, Derek.”

“Hi, Yasmine.”

Aisha pulls him inside and tells him, “My bed or the floor, Der-bear. I need the desk. Got a chem test tomorrow.”

He curls up against her pillows and pulls out his math homework, but Yasmine finds a funny video with a cat playing the synthesizer, and they end up watching random YouTube videos. After fifteen minutes, though, Aisha stands up and declares the study break over and returns to her desk.

Derek picks up his math homework again, but he’s already feeling better. Even just watching stupid videos with his sister and her friends makes him feel more human. They work quietly until Yasmine looks up from her phone to tell them Margot Edelman is asking for her. Apparently, Justin Ennis broke up with her and she needs moral support. “But don’t tell anyone, okay?”

They promise not to tell, and Yasmine jogs out down the hall. Aisha glances at him with a twinkle in her eyes.

He smiles back. “You need to actually start using your amazing font of gossip. No one would suspect you, Yasmine least of all.”

She giggles. “I really should. I could rule the gossip black market from this very seat. The people of Andover wouldn’t know what hit them.”

“They’ll mention it at graduation. ‘And now I have the pleasure to present your valedictorian and gossip czarina, Aisha Ruhi Nurse!’ You’ll get a medal.”

“ _Allahu Akbar,_ Daisy Skrzypzek would be so jealous! It would my truest vengeance!” she laughs. “Okay, now I’m in way too good a mood. Tell me serious things to get me in the mood for studying.”

He tries to think of anything sad to tell her, and suddenly all he can think about are his personal struggles. He tries to think of any ‘fun’ facts, like he usually tells her, but today was not a good day, and as soon as he starts thinking about it, he can’t stop. But she’s looking at him expectantly, and he looks at her dolefully. “Sorry, I can’t think of anything but my own drama.”

She cocks her head and looks at him earnestly. “Yeah?” He shrugs, and she watches him for a moment. Then she slams her textbook closed and climbs onto the bed next to him to snuggle up against his shoulder. “Tell me about it, baby.”

“Who are you, Mom?”

“They tell me I look like her. Anyway, talk to me.”

“What about your homework?” He feels like such a mooch, taking over part of her room and now taking time away from her work.

“I can take a break to talk to my baby brother.” She chucks him under the chin with her finger. “What ills do plague you, brother mine?”

He stares at the smiling faces on her ridiculous _High School Musical 3_ poster, with all the happy seniors jumping together, and tries to collect all his most recent cringe-inducing moments into some kind of coherent complaint. Like when he finally managed to chirp one of his teammates, and they all went quiet, and he had to actually tell them it was joke. Or when he tried to contribute to a little conversation happening at the back of his math class, and they looked at him like he had three heads. Or when he walked into the library and realized he was literally the only person who was there alone. He stares at all the happy Disney smiles until he realizes: “Aisha, I’m like Ryan Evans.”

She glances up at the poster then looks at him, amazed. “From _High School Musical_? You actually paid attention to them?”

He rolls his eyes at her. “Unfortunately. Anyway, like, in the first movie, his only friend is his sister, right? His way more popular, crazy-talented sister.” He looks at her meaningfully and she grimaces. “Ishee, you are the only person I can talk to here without actually being so awkward I want to die.”

She pouts sympathetically. “But he makes friends in the later ones. Ryan Evans is a success story. He doesn’t really need Sharpay.”

“But what if I never make friends? Then when you graduate, I’ll be Ryan Evans with no Sharpay and no friends! I will be the most pathetic person on campus, and people will literally become less popular just by talking to me.”

“That is not true! You will make friends! And, for the record, you have friends. I know for a fact that Ben Knight thinks you are cool.”

“Shitty thinks all the freshman on JV are cool.”

Aisha snorts with amusement. “Where did they get ‘Shitty’ out of ‘Bentley Sheridan Knight’?”

He shrugs and stares at the ceiling, contemplating his doomed life as a high schooler with no friends.

His sister rests her head against his. “It’s gonna be okay, Der,” she whispers.

“ _In Shaa Allah_ ,” he mumbles, trying to sound more hopeful than he feels. He doesn’t want Aisha to worry about him. She has her own life, and it’s not her job to babysit him.

“Exactly. You’re going to be fine.”

Suddenly his phone alarm starts singing to remind him about curfew. “Shit, it’s 7:45.”

He gathers up his bag, gives Aisha a last hug before he jogs back to his dorm just in time for curfew.

Yippee, he thinks, now I can do my math homework alone!

***

Derek thinks having trouble making friends wouldn’t bother him so much if everyone else didn’t seem to be having such an easy time of it. He’d kind of expected to struggle. He’d stumbled into all his friendships so far. He only became friends with Miles in kindergarten out of the sheer luck that he lived down the block from Derek, and Miles had introduced him to Leah in fourth grade, and they decided to stick together and go to the same middle school.

But at Andover, it seems like practically everyone found their lifelong best friends in the first three weeks, and he just got left behind.

He arrives early to art and finds his usual spot in the back corner of the class. He carefully pulls out his project from the drawer in the table, trying not to breathe too hard. They’re doing collages, and his little pile of paper scraps is constantly threatening to blow away. He arrays the pieces he cut last time out over the table for consideration. He’s attempting a sort of Afro-futurist vibe, though as he looks at the pieces again, he thinks his color scheme could use some work.

“Hey, that looks like really cool project!”

Derek looks up to find Juan Carlos de Córdoba smiling at him, surrounded by his crew of soccer players and preps. “Thanks,” replies Derek, in a mostly civil tone.

Juan Carlos’s smile falters a little, but he points to the stool next to Derek and asks, “Is anybody sitting here?”

Derek shakes his head, so Juan Carlos sits, bringing his whole retinue with him, chattering happily. It’s the first time Derek has sat at a full table in art so far, but honestly it’s not much of an improvement. There are so many inside jokes he can barely understand what they’re talking about, and he has to move his collage pieces to make room for everyone else.

Nursey is deep in concentration gluing down a star-shaped piece of tissue paper when suddenly Juan Carlos asks, “Derek, are you going to the football game on Friday?”

Derek starts so violently that he tears off the corner of his star. “Shit.”

He starts peeling off the rest of the ruined star, and Juan Carlos gasps, “I’m so sorry! Can I help you make a new one?”

Derek shoots him a dark look. “It’s fine.”

Juan Carlos looks chastened and returns to his collage. Derek feels a sort of vindictive pleasure at Juan Carlos’s obvious embarrassment. He knows it’s not fair to dislike a guy just because he’s better than Derek at making friends, but Juan Carlos’s degree of popularity is honestly just annoying. The guy made it onto the varsity soccer team as a freshman, he’s clearly one of the best students in their class, and he’s the kind of good-looking that means he’s already formed a following of girls. It’s all made even more annoying by the fact that he actually seems to be a really nice guy. Everyone genuinely likes him.

And now it seems like he’s trying to conquer Derek, to make sure that he is truly, uniformly beloved. Well, he can try, thinks Derek. It won’t be that easy.

***

Juan Carlos doesn’t let up, though. He doesn’t try to talk to Derek for the rest of that art class, but he keeps sitting next to him in their art class, and in their English class. It’s kind of obnoxious, really. Derek thinks he’s making it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to be in the Juan Carlos de Córdoba fan club, but the guy keeps ambushing him at the beginning of class or sometimes even at lunch, asking Derek if he likes the books they’re reading or how hockey training is going.

At some point, he mentions how annoying Juan Carlos has been to his sister while they’re hanging out. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, though, she punches his shoulder, hard. “Derek, what the hell? You’ve been moaning about not having any friends ever since you got here, and now that there’s someone actually trying to be your friend, you’re just gonna say ‘no’? _Ya Allah_. Why do I even bother?”

“It’s not like that. He doesn’t actually want to be my friend. He just wants to make sure every single person in our class loves him!”

She stares at him with abject disbelief. “Are you joking me?”

He has to look away. He has a creeping sense that he’s been kind of an idiot. “Never mind. I’ll talk to him.”

“You better,” Aisha says threateningly. They return to their work, but the sense of shame doesn’t leave him. Juan Carlos was trying to be nice, and he has been nothing but a dick to him, just because people actually like Juan Carlos. If he’s honest with himself, it was because he was jealous.

He carefully writes in his planner for tomorrow, “Stop being a fool.”

***

As soon as Derek gets to English the next day, he spots Juan Carlos pulling out his binder and jogs over to his desk. “Hey, Juan Carlos. How are you doing?”

Juan Carlos looks up, suddenly beaming. “Hi Derek! I’m tired but good. How are you?”

“I’m okay,” he answers thoughtlessly. Then he swallows and says, as casually as he can, “You busy tonight?”

Juan Carlos’s eyes grow wide, and he nearly misses his desk as he puts down his book. “Um, I have practice until 8, but I’m free after that. What’s up?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to play _Portal 2_ co-op tonight?”

And suddenly Juan Carlos is smiling again. “Yeah! That sounds amazing!”

“Derek, Juan Carlos. Class is starting,” calls Ms. Ramakrishnan, glancing at them with a raised eyebrow.

Derek nearly trips over his shoes as he hustles back to his desk, but his heart is light. He is going to hang out with a person who isn’t his sister! Which is maybe a kind of pathetic thought, but whatever!

When Juan Carlos arrives at his room, his arms are full of snacks Derek has never seen before, all wrapped in colorful packages with maybe Spanish or Portuguese on them.

“ _Allahu Akbar_. That is so much food!” He just stands there staring, forgetting entirely to, like, invite Juan Carlos in.

Juan Carlos looks down bashfully at the pile of packages. “Yeah. My grandmother sends me a lot of care packages. I’ve been working my way through them, but–” he glances up at Derek, “–I could use some help.” He stares back down at the food, his brown cheeks colored ever so slightly pink.

“Oh, yeah, definitely. You’re going to have to tell me what they are, though.” He finally remembers his manners and steps aside so Juan Carlos can dump his snacks on Derek’s bed.

The _Portal 2_ plan is forgotten as Juan Carlos explains what each of the snacks is. “They’re all Mexican snacks, so they’re all kind of spicy and lime-y, so like, I’m going to say that a lot.”

“Okay, I’m ready.”

Derek tries a little bit of everything. He’s never had anything tamarind-flavored before, but after he gets used to it, he’s popping tamarind lollipops like nothing. And Juan Carlos laughs at him for destroying two Mazapan cakes before he actually manages to eat one, but then he gets a picture of Juan Carlos with Taki powder in his eyebrow, somehow, so it balances out.

By the time they’re through the snacks, it’s almost time for lights out in the dorm. They stuff all the empty packages into Derek’s trash, and Derek holds out fist. “We successfully ate through your snacks!”

Juan Carlos bumps him, but then he smiles bashfully again. “Um, actually, that was just one of the care packages my _abuela_ sent me? I have so much left. Like, so much.”

“We’ll just have to keep working at it. I need to feed my new tamarind addiction, anyway.”

Juan Carlos laughs and pulls his backpack over his shoulder. “Cool. Good night, Derek.” He starts heading out, and Derek doesn’t really know where to stand – it’s not quite like when people leave your apartment.

Derek decides to lean against the edge of his closet door. It immediately slams shut, and Derek slams into the wall. “See you tomorrow, Juan Carlos,” he groans.

Juan Carlos is staring at him, his eyes slightly wide, but he waves and starts heading out the door, until he suddenly stops. He looks at Derek. “Derek?”

“Yeah?” Derek rubs his shoulder to see if it’s injured.

“Call me Juanca.”

Before Derek can even respond, the door is closed, and he is left wondering what the hell that means.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you want to read more of my things, I am on [tumblr](https://liminal-space-llc.tumblr.com)!
> 
> The rest of the countdown is [here](https://liminal-space-llc.tumblr.com/post/179805915293/countdown-to-twosf)!


End file.
